We’re All Just Living Under the Tyranny of Joe Manchin

“Everything’s a question mark, because we no longer live in a democracy. We live under the tyranny of Joe Manchin,” says Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) of the current state of Congress.

The congressman, who represents America’s most impoverished district, New York’s 15th, joins Molly Jong-Fast on the latest episode of The New Abnormal to explain why making President Biden’s child tax credit permanent could be his administration’s greatest legacy. But it all rests in the hands of a single—tyrannical—senator.

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It’s emblematic of a broken system, says Torres, 33, who made history when he took office in January.

“The structure of the Senate is keeping us frozen in the past,” he tells Molly. “You know, the notion that one U.S. senator who represents a state one-fourth the size of New York City has the power to derail the priorities of Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate and a Democratic president is absurd. It’s an indictment of just how profoundly broken our system has become.”

Also on the show, Andy Slavitt, Biden’s outgoing coronavirus adviser and author of the new book Preventable, says it would be “healthy for us to try to hold to account not just the president, but ourselves, each other” after 600,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. “There were a lot of people who were doing just fine during the pandemic, getting Amazon deliveries and so forth. But for that to happen, there has to be a lot of people delivering Amazon packages and working in the warehouses. They have very little protection. More than half the country was deemed an essential worker. So we know there’s a lot of things we need to look at.”

Slavitt also talks about why the Trump administration empowered former President Donald Trump’s coronavirus lackey, Scott Atlas, and why he had us “begging Deborah Birx.”

Former Missouri secretary of state and Majority 54 podcast host Jason Kander also goes in-depth with Molly—who asks how Democrats can possibly take back red states “if we can’t get people like you to run? No pressure.” Tune in for his response and what we can learn from Georgia.

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